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Domestic violence victims made homeless due to council failures [1]
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Date: 2023-09
Domestic violence victims are being forced to keep living with their abusers or live on the streets because councils are failing to house them.
One leading charity told openDemocracy of a case in which a woman had to sleep in her car for two weeks, during which time the council phoned her abusive ex-partner to ask if she could move back in.
More than 10% of investigations into councils’ housing services concerned survivors of domestic abuse, openDemocracy analysis has found.
They included cases where survivors had been sexually or physically assaulted by their abusers after councils failed to house them.
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Councils have a legal obligation to urgently provide housing to anyone made homeless after fleeing domestic abuse, without prejudice and without asking for evidence. They also have an obligation to rehouse survivors if their new home is unsuitable, or leaves them at risk of further abuse.
But charity Refuge told openDemocracy survivors are being asked to provide ‘evidence’ of their abuse by councils.
One woman told us she was made to feel like a “criminal” when she asked a council for housing support, and having been refused help is now at risk of being declared “intentionally homeless”.
openDemocracy analysed Local Government Ombudsman reports and found at least 55 of the 535 cases in the 2022-2023 financial year related to council housing provision for domestic abuse survivors.
In one case in Enfield, north London, a woman was put into temporary accommodation in the borough when she became homeless after fleeing domestic abuse, only for her former partner to access the property and attack her.
The council moved her but failed to fix a broken front door at the new property for 11 months, during which time the house was broken into.
When council officers eventually offered her a house it was close to the prison her ex-partner was in, and despite being warned of the risk the council said if she didn’t take it she would be refused further support, leaving her homeless. Enfield Council apologised and paid the victim £3,338, before being ordered to pay an additional £3,262.
In Tower Hamlets, east London, a woman said she was sexually assaulted by her former partner after council delays in moving her from an address he had become aware of. A month earlier, the council had lowered the priority of her case as it deemed her abuser “no longer posed a high risk to the family”. The Ombudsman found the council was not at fault, partly because the woman said she had not wanted to move into emergency accommodation.
In another Tower Hamlets case, a woman was awarded £500 after the council failed to offer her permanent secure housing for ten months after she fled an abusive partner, despite admitting it had a duty to house her.
And Bristol Council failed to adequately support a victim of domestic abuse after accidentally allocating a home on her street to a relative of her attacker. Bristol acknowledged its error and vowed not to repeat it.
Ruth Davison, chief executive of Refuge, the UK’s largest domestic abuse charity, said the failings were having “catastrophic consequences” for survivors.
She added: “It is imperative we overcome these failings, so survivors are not left with having to choose between staying with dangerous perpetrators and becoming homeless.”
Davison said the charity had seen a growing number of local authorities’ gatekeeping access to social housing for survivors of abuse by delaying decisions, telling survivors incorrect information and wrongly asking for ‘evidence’ of their abuse.
Diana* left an abusive partner in 2020, taking her two young children with her. She initially lived off savings, but that soon began to run out.
“I had to start to claim universal credit, [which] did not cover my rent,” she tells openDemocracy.
Earlier this year, after months of looking for places in domestic violence refuges that were either full, or too far from London for her to access her son’s doctors, she went to a north London council for help.
However, she was told it didn’t have a responsibility to house her because she was “low risk” and did not have a current place in a refuge.
She was offered help sourcing a private rented property within her universal credit housing allowance budget – something almost impossible to do in her borough – meaning she had to choose between living in an overcrowded studio flat or leaving her support network in the capital – something she says her case worker pushed her to do.
“They speak to you in this way – like they're gaslighting you, basically, and not taking your concern seriously at all,” she recalls.
“To hear that from a specialist is the worst thing in the world when you're wanting help. It’s as if the council are saying: ‘You don't deserve this, we're going to treat you like a criminal’ just to prevent you from trying to get help.”
In the end, Diana only received a ‘discretionary housing payment’ to help pay the rent – but even that is now set to be withdrawn, as the council claims she has rejected housing. In fact, she has not been offered housing by the council, but a place at a refuge in Colchester she couldn’t take.
“They know full well that I can't afford to live without that money,” she adds. “I just don't know what's going to happen.”
In the majority of cases where the LGO ruled councils had failed to meet their legal duties to support survivors, they were only asked to apologise. A small number of cases involved cash settlements, almost always below £1,000.
The LGO has published two reports on council failures to meet their housing duty since 2020 – with one outlining failures in a case involving a survivor of domestic abuse. In another report in 2021 it warned delays by councils to offer support to domestic abuse victims were leaving “vulnerable people at risk for longer than necessary”.
Charities say the problem has been growing for years, driven by a lack of council funding, a shortage of social housing and a chronic lack of places at refuges.
Repeated failures now mean some victims are not even trying to seek help.
Tara Ojofeitimi, of charity Solace Women's Aid, said London councils are regularly asking survivors to move to housing as far away as Manchester where they have no support.
She also cited a case where a council had taken two weeks to house someone fleeing domestic abuse.
“The local authority actually went back to call the perpetrator to ask if they could come back home,” she recalls. “That was a failure in itself, but on top of that they were told to go back home that evening. Obviously, they couldn’t go back home so they slept in their car with their child.”
Ojofeitimi added: “We've had cases where service users have gone back home to their perpetrator, just because housing hasn't been provided.
"I think housing is one of the biggest issues in what we do. To get them out of that home, get them to a place where they're safe, so we can start all that other support.”
As Diana put it: “It’s like a full time job dealing with this. It doesn't ever stop.”
*names have been changed to protect anonymity
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